Deadly Heat

EIGHTEEN

Rainbow wished he could see more of her face. Too much silhouette and shadow, he thought. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed so many lights, after all. But the glow inside the Sikorsky’s cabin should be enough. If she would only favor him just a bit more. He tensed his jaw and muttered to himself, “Come on, Nikki, let me see you.”

“You’d have to turn around,” said Detective Heat, “but I wouldn’t advise it.”

He lifted his head up from the rifle scope and cocked his head slightly to the side. In his periphery he made her out. Heat, not ten feet away, hidden behind the rooftop air-conditioning box with her elbows braced and her Sig aimed right at his head. She spoke quietly, in total control. “NYPD. Move your hands away from that rifle, or I’m going to get your brains all over my favorite jacket.”

Windsor complied. “How long have you been there?”

“Well before you,” said Detective Heat, the poster cop for tactics and cover. “Now crawl backward toward me, slowly.” He got up on all fours, creeping in reverse, moving out of reach of the rifle. “Good. Now, facedown, nose to the deck. Spread your arms wide and turn your palms up.” As soon as he parked himself, Heat came around, patted him down for weapons, and stood over him, bending slightly so her head wouldn’t bump the steel girders on the underside of the FDR. “You even scratch, I’ll shoot.” He said nothing, just kept his face to the tar.

Nikki half-turned to the helipad and called out, “Detective Hinesburg.”

Below, the silhouette near the helicopter spun her way. In the dim light, Heat could barely make out Sharon Hinesburg’s arms coming up in a combat stance, but then, back-lit by the window of the helicopter, Heat saw her pointing locked hands toward the rooftop of the modular building and sweeping them frantically back and forth. “Hold your fire, Detective,” she shouted. “I’ve got Glen Windsor in custody. Get over here and cover him while I get him down.”

Hinesburg repositioned the fire safety ladder Heat had used, carrying it to the front of the building where they could take advantage of more ambient light from across the river. From the rooftop, Nikki trained a bright Mag-Tac LED in Glen Windsor’s eyes to glare him out as he descended to Hinesburg. Both detectives held weapons on him. “Kiss the deck again,” said Heat when he reached the bottom. Nikki waited for the other detective to cuff his hands behind his back before she descended.

“How the fuck?” asked Rainbow, twisting his head to the side.

“Rule one of an ambush,” said Heat. “Show up first.”

“But how did you know?” asked Hinesburg. “I didn’t know.”

Heat didn’t have time for the list of things Hinesburg didn’t know-that would be coming, and soon-so she kept it brief. “Salena Kaye sounded drugged on that call. Tortured, too, it turns out. She even tried to give me a signal by mixing up Dunkin’ Donuts with Starbucks. Those raised my suspicion.

“But then I got the DMV hit on the minivan you have registered in Connecticut,” she said to Rainbow. “The silver minivan. Same color and model seen taking Salena Kaye away when I chased her. But you didn’t rescue her, did you, Glen? You’d been stalking me and kidnapped her. What did you do, chloroform her?”

“Chloroform,” he said. “They always go quietly.”

And then Heat made it all formal. “Glen Windsor, you are under arrest for the murders of Roy Conklin, Maxine Berkowitz, Douglas Sandmann, and Joseph Flynn.” With a glance to the helicopter, she added, “And Salena Kaye.”

His only response was to ask if he could get up now. Heat had more to accomplish and said no.

“Want me to get my car?” asked Hinesburg.

“No. I want you to give me your gun.”

Sharon chuckled nervously. “Excuse m-?” In a quick, unexpected move, Heat jerked the Smith amp; Wesson from her hand and slipped it in her jacket pocket. She held on to her Sig Sauer, covering both of them now.

“Nikki… What was that for?”

Heat popped her Mag on again and shined it down on Windsor so there’d be some light without blinding her. “This will help them spot us. I texted for backup while you moved the ladder. I’d like you on the ground, Sharon.”

“What is going on here?”

In the new light, Nikki could see the widening of her eyes. And the fear. Heat said, “Glen beat you to it.”

“To what? What the hell are you talking about?”

“You came to kill Salena Kaye before she could give up the terror plot. Or you came to kill me. Or both.”

“I… Wha… Seriously?”

“I knew you would listen to the recording of Salena’s phone call. It’s how you knew to come here. But just in case, I left the pad on my desk with the time and place of our meeting.”

“You baited me?”

“It’s only bait if you take it. Right, Glen?”

“Fuck yourself.”

Hinesburg said, “This is nuts. I came here to back you up.”

“Sure, you did. Very proactive of you for a change, Sharon.”

“OK, know what I think? You need to stop. It’s one thing not to like me, but-”

“This isn’t because I don’t like you.”

“Then why?”

“It’s because you’re the mole.” Hinesburg’s mouth opened to protest some more, but nothing came out. Nikki leveled her gaze at her and said, “I saw you on video at the Coney Crest, Sharon. Salena’s hideout.”

“Yuh. Because you told me to go there.” Hinesburg sounded worse than unconvincing. She sounded chin-deep in quicksand.

“I watched the security video from that place. Know what got my antenna up first? When you talked to the manager, you never flashed tin and you never showed him the picture of Salena Kaye.” Hinesburg started to talk, but Nikki pressed forward, cutting her off. “That got my attention, but I could even dismiss that as part of your sloppy work habits. Trust me, the least of your worries. But I let the video roll and I saw you on the other cam. Sharon, you went up to the second floor.”

“That does not mean anything.”

“No, but then I kept watching. And when you came down you were putting something in your bag. It looked just like a garage door opener. But it wasn’t, was it, Sharon? It was the remote control for the bomb that killed Tyler Wynn, wasn’t it? That’s why you showed up uninvited for that raid, to get close enough to trigger it.”

Hinesburg didn’t reply. Her eyes began to fill. She stared into nothingness. Heat waved her gun toward the blacktop. “Assume the position. Don’t make this worse for yourself than it is.”

Not so much defiant as immobile, Hinesburg stayed put. Her lip began to quiver. “They came to me one day and asked me to stay close to you.”

“And do what? Screw up my investigation?”

“No, just to keep track. Let them know what you were doing. And when. That was all.” Even in the dim light Nikki could see Hinesburg’s features draw slack under shame’s gravity. Heat wondered, was Sharon’s incompetence real or, as the playwright said, was she just being wise enough to play the fool? “I never knew it would go this far. When people started dying, I freaked. Nikki, do you have any idea how much pressure I’ve been under?”

At that point Heat went with fool.

“Then they started asking me to do more than just inform. When I saw what happened to other people, I didn’t dare say no. They had me slow down the investigation wherever I could. And then warn them when you were coming on a raid. And what did I get for all my stress? A few thousand extra and the joy of fucking Wally Irons to keep my job.” She wiped away a clear string of snot. “They’ll try to kill me, too, you know.” Wheels started turning. “I want protection.”

Heat had heard those very words a few hours before. From the corpse staring out at them from the rear seat of the chopper.

“Sharon, the bomb you triggered killed a man.”

“I’ll deal. I know stuff.”

“Start now. When and where’s the bioterror event?”

“That, I don’t know. Honest.”

“Who’s running it? Who’s running you?” Sirens grew in the near distance. “Now would look better for you, Sharon.”

Glen Windsor’s play came so suddenly she found herself halfway to the ground before she realized he’d made his move. She didn’t see it, but figured later that it must have been some kind of break-dancer’s body pop. He bounced his chest off the tarmac and flung his calves at the back of Heat’s knees, taking her down. She dropped the flashlight, but held on to her gun. When she came up, he was running toward the river full speed with his hands cuffed behind him.

Nikki made a fast check of Hinesburg. She stood nearby but had the rabbit look in her eyes. Torn, Heat turned back to Windsor, approaching the tail of the Sikorsky, steps from diving into the water. She braced, called, “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” then fired low, planting one in his calf. He crumpled, moaning on the tarmac against the red and white safety curb at the river’s edge.

A voice behind her shouted, “Heat, gun!” Nikki hit the deck at the same time she heard the distinctive crack of a.40-caliber. She rolled, presenting the smallest target to the shot direction, and braced to fire. But she held.

In the shadows, she recognized Special Agent Callan standing over Sharon Hinesburg, who was sprawled on the blacktop under the nose of the copter. “Clear,” he called. Strobing lights from police cruisers and plain wraps flashed outside the gate and reflected off the badges of unis rushing toward them. Heat got up, dragged Glen Windsor away from the river’s edge, and dropped him hard. Then she ran to Callan, getting there just as he kicked a pistol away from Hinesburg’s hand. In his own he held his P226 Elite. Nikki could still smell gunpowder.

“She was going to back-shoot you,” he said. “You’re fucking lucky I made it.”

Heat told the uniforms, “Get paramedics, two down. Hurry.” She knelt beside Hinesburg. She had a fat hole in her temple.

Her eyes looked just like Salena Kaye’s.

Dry lightning sparked to the north when Heat finished her debrief with the shooting team. Lauren Parry had wrapped up her exams of Salena Kaye and Sharon Hinesburg, preliminarily finding both causes of death obvious, but worthy of follow-up. The ME told Nikki she’d pull an all-nighter and perform the postmortems so she could have the findings first thing in the morning.

She found Bart Callan sitting with his elbows on his knees on the short wooden ramp that led from the tarmac to the boarding area of the modular. He stared blankly at the sheet over Hinesburg’s body and the numbered yellow marker the shooting team had placed beside his ejected casing. He didn’t acknowledge Heat. She stood beside him and followed his gaze, then said, “Tough to take someone out. Especially a cop.”

He held up the evidence bag with the pistol inside it. “Hinesburg’s backup piece. Mini Glock Twenty-six. Nine millimeters to spoil your day.” He set the bag down on the ramp between his shoes. “I can live with the kill. Lose a cop, save a cop.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He gave the shortest nod and said, “Guess you had your hands too full to pat her down.”

“You could say my attention became somewhat divided by his escape attempt.” She realized her palm still rested on him and drew it away. “You got here fast, thank God. I’d barely put out the ten-thirteen.”

“I was already en route.” When he saw her reaction, he said, “Soon as I heard about your meet, I thought I’d better get over here and cover your idiotic butt. Any complaints?”

“None.” Then she asked, “Heard about it how?”

“Yardley Bell told me.”

“Agent Bell? How did she know?”

He picked up the evidence bag and stood. “Didn’t ask. I just assumed she heard it from your boyfriend.”

Rook spun through the revolving door at the entrance to Bellevue Hospital and shouted her name as the door spit him out into the lobby. “Nikki!” echoed in the cavernous atrium renovators had built five years before, encasing the old stone hospital in glass like a living museum display. When he reached her, Rook grabbed Heat in his arms, clinging tight, whispering in her ear, “Holy shit, Nik, sometimes you scare the hell out of me.” When they kissed, he sensed her reserve and studied her. “You OK?”

She considered a moment and let it go at “Been a hell of a night. Glen Windsor is upstairs getting his calf sewn up. Soon as he’s out, he’s mine to interrogate.”

They found a couch to wait on in the Hospital PD Squad Room near the ER, and she bulleted the sequence of events, first going back to how she knew from the sound of Salena Kaye’s phone call something was up; how she sounded either drugged or under duress, and how she’d even slipped Heat a hidden message.

“But what gave you the idea to connect her to Rainbow?”

“That by itself would have been a Jameson-esque leap, but it’s been bugging me how quickly Kaye just vanished off the street when I chased her out of that deli.”

“After my Jameson-esque takedown?”

“What have I started?” She pressed her forefinger on his lips and continued, explaining the DMV trace on the silver minivan that made Glen Windsor a probable. “I couldn’t be certain, but I figured, if he was setting me up, I could get there early enough and get in position to take him.”

“And if it hadn’t been a setup by Rainbow?”

“Then, worst-case scenario, I could still apprehend Salena Kaye.”

He processed it and said, “Well done. Very Nikki-esque.”

“Don’t even.”

“Hinesburg, though… Man.”

“I have to admit, I feel sort of blindsided, too. I guess I started to have inklings that I must have denied-I mean she was a flake-but that security video from Coney Crest was the big domino, knocking down all the others. Every one of her cute little screwups and oversights started looking more like sabotage: telling me Wynn’s bomb was a timer when it was a remote…”

“Because she triggered it…”

“Screwing up the tipster call from the rent-a-car guy who spotted Salena Kaye…”

“So she could warn her…”

“And on and on.”

“It’s ingenious. Incompetence masking subterfuge. And there she was, hiding in plain sight in the middle of your bull pen.” He reflected and said, “One good thing. You flushed out the mole. No more looking over your shoulder before you say something.”

“I sure hope not.” She shaded that thought and got his attention.

“What?”

“Know how Callan got to the heliport so fast? Yardley Bell told him about my meet.”

He thought about that. “How would Yardley know?”

Nikki gave him an appraising look. “You tell me.”

“Wait, you don’t think I-Nikki, seriously?” She said nothing, one part interrogation technique, the other not wanting to think it was so. “Hey, I will admit to a lot of things. Yes, I went to Nice with her. Yes, I told her when I was trying to track down Tyler Wynn through his… through his wine and custom shoe purchases.”

“And about the jerk chicken pop-up stores.”

“Yes. But when you tell me something is between us, it stays between us.”

“Then how did Yardley know?”

“No clue. But I can look you square in the eye and tell you it wasn’t me?”

They held each other’s stare. After a few seconds her phone buzzed with a text.

“Is that my lie detector result?” he asked.

“Don’t need one. Lucky for you, pal, I trust you.” She held up the phone. “Glen Windsor’s out of surgery. Want to come?”

“You bet.” Rook stood up and got out his cell. He gave Heat a sly grin and said, “Let me call Yardley first.”

The uniform stationed outside Glen Windsor’s private room on the second floor gave Rook an appraising once-over as they arrived just before midnight. “It’s all right, she’s with me, Officer,” Rook said. The cop actually laughed and, following Heat’s nod, gestured them both to pass.

They found the prisoner with his bandaged leg up on a pillow, watching NY1 news on the overhead. He didn’t seem surprised by Heat’s visit but said, “Wow, Jameson Rook, too. Am I going to be featured in your next article?”

“Absolutely. I’m doing one on excrement.”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.” He tugged at the manacle that cuffed him to the bed rail. “But I can still wave hello.” He gave Rook the finger and laughed. Nikki switched off the TV. “Hey, come on, I’m the lead story. I want to see it again.”

“You’ll be hearing about it for some time, Windsor,” she said.

Rook added, “Like the rest of your life.”

“Hey, why the disrespect, Rook? It’s not like you’re the one I was trying to kill.” He grinned. “Allegedly.”

As Heat drew over a chair she eye-signaled Rook to ease up, and he took a spot leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. “How’s the leg?” she asked Windsor.

“You need some time on the range to requalify, Detective.”

“I put it right where I wanted it, believe me. If I’d killed you, we never could have had this chance to chat.” She took a seat and gave him some silence in an attempt to claim the meeting. Detective Rhymer had e-mailed Windsor’s file to her and Nikki opened the printout she’d made downstairs at Hospital PD. “Our detectives turned up some interesting things at your apartment.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s start with the electronic box that alters voice pitch over the phone.”

Windsor scoffed. “I only use that to order pizzas. You’d be surprised how fast they deliver when Darth Vader places the call.”

Nikki decided to ignore the glib distractions and continued. “In your desk they found numerous files of clippings about me. Not just that cover story from last fall’s magazine-heavily underlined and highlighted. Also articles about cases I’ve worked over the past few years and photos of me-and not clipped. We checked your camera. They were taken by you without my knowledge. Pictures of me in the supermarket, pictures of me jogging, pictures of me taken through windows into my apartment.”

“What can I say? I’m a fan.”

“Your computer history shows a ton of searches for me, for Rook, and others in my life, including my parents, coworkers, even criminals I have arrested.”

“Detective, everybody clips articles and searches shit that interests them on their computers. It’s not like I have this secret closet with your pictures plastered all over it.”

“No, that would be nutty,” said Rook. Nikki flattened him with a glower, and he stared at the floor.

When Heat turned back to Windsor, he said, “He doesn’t get it. Calling it nutty.”

“What do you call it?” she asked.

“Preparation.” He held her gaze a moment, letting that settle before he continued. “I learned about you in his first article. You know, Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave? I read it over and over and thought, This one… this detective… is different. A challenge.” The words twisted Heat’s solar plexus as she recalled the other detectives Windsor had engaged over the years. And killed. Now she was designated as “this one.” He watched her from his pillow and must have known exactly what she was processing because he said, “I decided last fall I would test myself with you, but it wasn’t until I saw the online teases for Rook’s new article about you that I said I’d better get moving.”

He stopped there, leaving Nikki time to reflect on a psychopath’s classic need to share-or even claim-the limelight of his fixation. “Tell me what you mean by that, to get moving.”

“I wanted to test you when the article came out. When you had everyone’s attention. When there’d be heat around Nikki.” He grinned. “Tell me I don’t have a poet’s touch.”

Heat’s temper sat one inch from breaking the surface, and she struggled not to lose it with this guy. But her objective-even more immediate than building a case against a serial killer-was only one thing: Nikki needed to learn whatever information he had tortured out of Salena Kaye so she could stop the bioterror plot. “Tell me about the conversation you had with the dead lady in the helicopter.”

“Now? I really wanted to see Ferguson’s monologue tonight.”

Letting her rage explode wouldn’t get her anywhere. She decided the time had come to get under his skin for a change. And Heat believed she knew the soft spot where the knife would go in.

As soon as Glen Windsor came on the radar as a suspect, she had unleashed Malcolm and Reynolds to do a biographical search on him. Heat held the results in her lap. She picked up the single page she hoped would tip the balance her way. “You like being a locksmith, Glen?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a job. It pays my way.”

“Yeah, but you? A… locksmith?” Nikki had respect for every trade, but for this purpose, she put a shit stank on the job title. He shifted slightly on the hospital bed and examined his fat bandage. “Not what you had in mind, was it?” His eyes flicked over when she played with the page in her hand. Nikki waited to milk the moment and said, “We did some research-yeah, we do computer searches, too-and know what popped up? You were dismissed from the NYPD Police Academy.”

“That’s ancient history,” he blurted, not sounding like it was archive material, at all.

“Maybe so, but it’s kind of interesting. According to records, you got bounced because you failed the psychological evaluation.”

“That’s a fucking rigged test.” His breathing became more rapid. Wilding flashed in his eyes. “You ever seen that test?”

“I have,” she answered quietly. “I took it myself. Passed.” She delivered that with a smile and let it sit there. “The thing about the psych eval? The deficient ones never think it’s valid.”

His manacles clanged against the stainless bar as he tried to sit up. “Hey, fuck you. Deficient, my ass. I was too smart for those losers at the Academy. They were threatened by my special gifts and set me up to get bounced. Jealous shits.”

“Bet you would have made a great detective, otherwise.”

“Fuckin’-A right.”

“Except I see the NYPD wasn’t the only place you failed. I don’t have all of them here, Glen, but there’s a short list of you washing out as an investigator at several top security firms and then a sort of descending curve of gigs until you landed at… locksmith.” Then she added, “Oh, and security systems. So you did have that going to keep the dream alive.”

“This is bullshit. I know what I can do. I know who I am. I know my destiny. I am smarter than all those assholes, and I’ve proved it.”

Rook chimed in. “By ambushing Bedbug Doug?”

“Hey, fuck you, too.”

Heat didn’t mind the gang pile this time. “Rook’s got a point.”

“The fuck he does.”

“Is that what your destiny’s all about?” she continued. “Sneaking up on innocent people pretending you’re better than they are?”

“And smarter. Don’t tell me you don’t know that. I had to practically draw you a picture to keep you in the game.”

“Oh, so you think I’m a loser, too.”

His demeanor snap-shifted from defensive to pure manic. “No, no, no, Detective. You made it all… come to, I dunno… life. You brought my game to the next level.”

“Well, game over, Glen,” said Heat.

“Like hell it is.”

Nikki reached out and clattered his chains with her thumb and forefinger. Then she closed the file, slid her chair away, and started for the door. When she got there, Windsor shouted, “You want to talk about Salena Kaye?” Nikki stopped, and he said, “I know stuff. I learned shit about this bioterror plot.”

Heat turned to Rook. “And Detective Windsor cracks his case.”

When she turned away, Windsor called, “I got it all out of that bitch when I worked on her. And trust me, Heat, you’ll want all of it.”

She stayed by the door but said, “I’m listening.”

“No. I want a deal first.”

“Don’t make me laugh, you’re a serial killer.”

“It’s not supposed to end like this.” He yelled and jerked at the wrist chains hard enough for the uniform to come in and make a check. After the uni left, Rainbow said, “You should have killed me, Heat. I deserve to go down in a blaze.” Destiny again, she thought. He became contemplative. Then he said, “You know where the deals are. Come up with something. Like doing life in a shitty prison versus a nice one out of state, maybe in warm weather, for starters. California. Arizona.”

“Clock’s running, Windsor. You want to talk deal, you’d better give up something you learned about this terror plot.”

He thought a short while, then calmly beckoned her over. When she stood beside him, he smiled and said, “When I’m ready. Come back tomorrow, I’ve had a hard day.” Then he closed his eyes and rolled his face away as if going to sleep.

On the way downstairs, Heat turned to Rook. “Don’t say it.”

“You mean, ‘Game not over’? ‘Do not proceed to the exit’?”

“I hate you.”

When Rook postponed their meeting with Puzzle Man, he had instructed him to hang loose. Now, as he and Nikki crossed the Bellevue lobby, he got out his cell to call him. Heat looked at her watch and said, “Now? These are drug dealer hours, he’s not going to-”

Rook held up a palm to her. “Keith. Rook. Hey, puzzle me this. You still good to go?” He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

Heat’s eyes burned from fatigue, and she felt so hungry that she was no longer hungry. But sleep would have to wait. “Can he meet us someplace they serve food?” she asked.

Tavern 29, walking distance for them, served all night, and Nikki craved one of their bacon burgers, which she ordered before she even sat down. A beer would have been perfect to go with it, but she didn’t want to lose her edge, and so went for a seltzer. They were both finishing their meals by the time Keith Tahoma strolled in, gray ponytail swaying, yakking from the door to their table about the awesome energy of New York freakin’ City at night. Heat was more interested in what he held in his hands than his speed-talk. He carried a tan cardboard tube from an empty roll of paper towels.

He ordered a coffee, and when it came, he repeated his ritual of six sugars and an OCD paddle stir. Heat asked him if that was going to keep him awake, and he laughed, saying, “So far, so good.”

Rook said, “Keith, I hate to put the squeeze on, but it’s been a long one, and we’re kind of eager to hear whatcha got.”

“Oh, yeah. For sure.” Nikki’s energy level perked up as Puzzle Man brought the cardboard tube up from his lap and set it on the table. “Apologies for the delay, this was one tough nut.”

“But you cracked it,” said Heat, not really asking so much as hoping. Or willing.

His answer was to pat the tube gently and wink. “Now, just so you don’t feel bad about not solving it yourselves, those little lines and squiggles were totally meaningless. I ran every cipher I could without success. And I know ’em all. Even invented a couple over the years. Then this morning, I’m sitting in the park, working my chess games, waiting for the other dopes to realize they’re six moves from losing. I look up and see this bird flapping along. And I saw a jet, probably coming around to land at JFK, five thousand feet higher than the bird. But to me, it looked just like the two were going to collide. You see?”

They both shook their heads.

“You will. It was a visual trick. The optical overlay created a message in my brain.” He stacked his hands flat before his eyes like pancakes.

Heat started to get there. “So you thought maybe all the pages could be overlaid, and this would be revealed.”

“No,” he said, then slapped the table and smiled. “Not all, but a few of the pages could be. After a fair amount of trial and error, I managed to find four pages of your mother’s sheet music that, if I stacked them and held them up to a lightbulb like a shadow box, I got a message. It wasn’t even in a cipher, it was right there in front of my eyes in the King’s English. Hot damn, I felt smart.”

“Do you, um…” Nikki gestured to the cardboard tube.

“ ’Deed I do.” He presented it to her with a flourish.

Nikki took it from him, made a privacy survey of the tavern, and pulled the furled sheets of paper out of the tube. She unrolled them, squared the edges on her place mat, and then, with her heart pounding, held the four stacked sheets to the candle. In her mother’s clean handwriting it read: Unlock the Dragon.

Her eyes went to the code breaker and then back to the message. Heat moved the pages, scanning them in front of the candle, hoping for more. “This is all it says?”

“That’s all she wrote, pardon my French.”

“May I?” asked Rook. She gave the sheets over to him, and he did the same thing, trying to scan for more text. While he held the pages to the light, Nikki thought about the Dragon. The word-obviously a code name-had first come into this case only days ago when the skyjacked helicopter passenger heard Salena Kaye call someone by that name on her cell phone. What had she said? “Dragon, it’s me.” So Dragon was Salena Kaye’s controller. Also Tyler Wynn’s, by his dying declaration. But now, in this code from the past, her mother mentioned him, too. All of which told Heat that the Dragon was as alive today as he had been eleven years ago.

Her mother had no way of knowing it would take so long for her daughter to get this message. But the code still left Nikki confused. And she sure didn’t have another eleven years to figure it out.

She didn’t even have eleven days.

Puzzle Man said, “You two seem a little less excited than I’d hoped you’d be.”

“No, no,” said Heat. “You did great, it’s just…”

Rook finished the thought. “We don’t know what it means.”

“Well, that’s an entirely different task,” said Puzzle Man. “Times like these, I go back to the wisdom shared by my shi’nali, the Windtalker. My grandfather used to tell me there’s one code you can never break.”

“What’s that?” asked Nikki, holding the words to the light again.

“The one that’s only known by two people. The sender and the receiver.”

Cynthia Heat spoke to her daughter in the nonsensical way apparitions do in sleep. Nikki saw her as she had countless times over the last eleven years, mostly in the middle of the night, although sometimes at unbidden daytime moments as mundane as when she reached for her MetroCard on her way down to the subway or smiled at a New Yorker cartoon. Her mother usually spoke to her from her own pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Over the years she’d said many things to her, mostly as much non sequiturs as the appearances themselves. This time, from the leaden depths only Nikki’s mattress seemed to possess, her mom sat playing her piano-the one in the room right up the hall-and spoke the same two words again and again like a video loop on an online avatar. Cindy Heat kept telling her daughter, “You know. You know. You know…”

A hand on Heat’s shoulder nudged her awake. She blinked. Still dark. Rook sat beside her, holding out her ringing cell phone. Heat cleared her throat and said her name into it. Listened, then moaned.

“What?” asked Rook.

“He’s out. Rainbow escaped.”

Heat got to Bellevue in record time because she didn’t have to get dressed. In her exhaustion at 2 A.M., Nikki had collapsed onto her bed still dressed. Four short hours later, she and Rook strode into Glen Windsor’s room on the second floor of the hospital, both wearing the same clothes as the night before. She looked at the empty bed and said, “Somebody explain this to me.” An NYPD uniformed officer standing with a pair of unis from Hospital Police lowered his eyes to the floor. She went to him. “What’s your name?”

“Slaughter.”

“Your first name.”

“Nate.”

She canted her head to put herself in his field of view. “Listen to me, Nate. I know this feels awful. But you’ve got to put it in your back pocket. This guy’s very resourceful, so hold off on the blame. Just tell me how it came down.”

Officer Slaughter said, “About one-thirty, the night nurse came in to take his temp. She didn’t realize it till later, but she had a pair of reading glasses in her front pocket he must have boosted when she leaned over to check his dressing.” The uniform indicated the eyeglasses on the counter.

Rook bent over them. “Temple’s been snapped off the frame.”

“Yeah, we figure he used the metal end to pick his cuffs.”

Rook said, “He didn’t tear off somebody’s face to use as a mask to get out, I hope.” The three cops stared at him. “Spoiler alert: Silence of the Lambs?” Then he said, “Continue, Officer Slaughter.”

“He overpowered an orderly when he came in, put on his scrubs, and waited for shift change so he could walk out past me.” The cop appealed to her, “I never saw him come in, so how could I know what he looked like?”

Alone in the elevator, Rook said to Nikki, “I’m sorry, but if your name’s Slaughter, you ought to have a little more swing in your dick. Just sayin’.”

“Glad you’re having such a good time,” she said. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to stop a bioterror plot, we still have nothing to go on, and my best hope to get a lead is my damned locksmith serial killer who just escaped. And you want to joke?”

He paused and said, “I mean, if your name was Slaughter, wouldn’t you at least hit the gym?”

Bellevue Hospital turfed to the Seventeenth Precinct, so on the cab ride uptown, Heat called Feller and assigned him to become best friends with the One-Seven detectives and to make sure Glen Windsor’s renewed APB extended to Amtrak, the airports, and the cut-rate buses in Chinatown. When she hung up, Rook said, “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“More gags for your stand-up?”

“No, about the case. Jeez, what do I have to do to get you to focus?” Then he became sober and continued, “I don’t think you need this APB.”

“Why not?”

“Because Rainbow is going to come to you.”

“Right.”

“Nikki, look at his pattern-and the evidence. Think of what you saw in your interrogation last night. Windsor is not just obsessed with you, he’s a full-goose borderline personality. Narcissistic, for sure, and I’ll bet grandiose. Clinically, that’s an ego that feeds on being the center of everything.”

“So you’re saying I should just call off the search?”

“No, I’m saying he’s going to reach out again like he did before. He has to. This is his moment, and he needs to engage you to claim it.”

“Engage me, like when he said I brought his game to the next level?”

“Exactly. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he won’t make contact. But, in case he does, I’d be thinking how to play him.”

Heat said, “This is the thing I hate most. Playing games.”

“You not only have to play this one, Nikki, somehow you have to figure out how to beat him at his own game.”

This was the essence of Rook, she thought. Sometimes he wore the clown paint. Sometimes he brought the goods. “If you’re so smart,” she said, “why don’t you tell me how to do that?”

He stared out his window a moment and then said words that echoed from a dream. He said, “You know.”

Heat and Rook walked into a bull pen blanketed by a quiet as toxic as doomsday ashfall. The palpable tautness radiated from a single empty desk-the one with the “Detective S. Hinesburg” nameplate. Everyone continued his or her work, but with a hollow look, not so much from mourning as from disillusionment. Somehow one of their own had gone bad. It felt different than corruption; cops on the take were still as much a reality in New York as anywhere. This was different. This was treason inside the Blue Line.

The lights were off inside the precinct commander’s glass office. Rhymer reported that Captain Irons had e-mailed saying he would be at One Police Plaza for an indefinite period that morning. The squad speculated whether he would ever be back, following his nightmare double-whammy. “Not a good day to be the Man of Iron,” said Detective Malcolm, with typically mordant understatement. “Bad enough he holds a press conference embracing a dude who turns out to be a serial killer. Now his office punch gets outed as a bioterror spy.”

“Fail,” said Reynolds.

“Epic fail,” added Feller.

Raley and Ochoa came in from their all-nighter at Hinesburg’s apartment. Benigno DeJesus followed them in his navy evidence collection unit windbreaker carrying two cardboard boxes of items he and his crew had collected there. He said they were headed to the lab and then to Internal Affairs. But since he also had to bag and tag Hinesburg’s desk, he’d brought along the apartment boxes to give Heat a chance to look them over before they went downtown. “Just wear gloves,” he said.

Rook and the squad gathered around as Nikki lifted the lids and carefully picked through the contents, replacing each in its carton following examination. She scanned the stack of open mail and bills, finding nothing useful. Underneath a toiletry kit of noncontroversial prescription meds, she found an evidence-bagged pocket pistol and held it up. “A Smith amp; Wesson M amp;P9 Shield,” said Detective DeJesus in his precise, curator’s manner.

Through the cellophane bag, Heat examined the 9mm, a favorite for deep undercover work because of its subcompact size. Feller scoffed. “Hinesburg had backups for her backups-for all the good they did her.” Nikki pondered that thought then returned the pistol to the box.

“Anybody check this computer?” she asked, holding up a brand-new laptop.

Detective Raley hinged it open and, while it booted, said, “Spent a couple hours on it. Nothing juicy saved on the drive, that I could find. No maps, no calendar entries for Saturday. But she had a link to a cloud e-mail service with the ‘keep me logged in’ box checked, so I was able to access it. Mostly Web shopping receipts, but there was one sent e-mail Hinesburg must have forgotten to delete.” He paused while it loaded. “Check it out.”

He turned the screen to Nikki, and she read it twice out of disbelief. The recipient’s e-mail address was some alphanumeric scramble, not a proper name, but the Web domain ended in.fr, signifying France. The subject line read: “Heat.” And the message itself said: “Arrives today. Hotel Opera, Rue de Richelieu.”

Rook said, “That was our hotel. And the date she sent this is the day before you and I went to Paris last month. Where we met Tyler Wynn.”

“Ready for the real smoking gun?” said Detective Ochoa, who excused himself and reached past Heat into the second box. He came out with a vanilla cell phone and held it up.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Ochoa handed it to her. “Can you believe it? Genius actually kept the burner cell. Slipshod and half-assed to the end.”

While Heat opened the Outgoing Calls list, Raley pulled a slip of paper from his vest pocket. “The last two outgoings match these phone numbers I pulled. They fit the times for the warning calls that went out to both Salena Kaye and Vaja Nikoladze. You’ll see there’s two other numbers in Recents. One was Tyler Wynn’s apartment. The other, I tried calling to see what it was but got a disconnect.”

Heat said, “I recognize this number… At least it looks familiar.” With a furrowed brow she took out her own cell phone and scrolled a few seconds until she found what she was looking for. She grabbed her keys and raced to the door, calling out, “Roach, Feller. Get your cars and follow me-now.”